Your Strata Management Questions, Answered

Fees are quoted building by building, not off a rate card — but the market has a recognizable shape, and you deserve to see it before you start collecting proposals. Here is roughly where full-service strata management sits in the Lower Mainland in 2026:

C&C’s Financial-Only Management starts at $1,050 per month. For Full Management, what moves your number is council meeting frequency, building age and condition, amenities, and whether you have sections or commercial units.

One piece of advice regardless of who you hire: ask for a written fee schedule, not just a monthly number. Typically there aren’t problems, but it’s better to be transparent up front.

Every strata management company charges extras. The honest ones list them before you sign.

Typical BC extras include AGM and SGM attendance beyond the contracted number, statutory documents (e.g. Form B and Form F), move-in and move-out administration, rush document requests, after-hours attendance, capital project management, bylaw drafting, and Civil Resolution Tribunal attendance.

On major projects, we bill project management as a percentage of project value. For C&C, that ranges from 1-5%, depending on the size of project and desired level of involvement from C&C. For any project where you may want our support, our Managing Broker will discuss your needs and then give you a price. Council can then decide whether to proceed, so there is no surprise invoice six months later.

Before you sign anything, ask for the complete fee schedule and ask specifically how many council meetings the base monthly fee covers. We provide ours with every proposal.

Yes. Small buildings are the ones most often declined by large national firms given the extent of the firms’ overhead expenses, yet where a boutique firm can be nimble and efficient enough to thrive.

There is a practical floor, and it’s worth understanding why: a 12-unit building still needs an AGM, audit-quality financial statements, an insurance renewal, statutory forms on deadline, and a manager who answers the phone. That work doesn’t shrink proportionally with unit count, which is why smaller stratas pay more per unit than a 200-unit tower does.  Our minimum fee is $1,050, for Financial-Only Management. 

We’ll tell you on the first call whether Full Management makes sense for your budget or whether Financial-Only is the better use of it.

The ones that reveal how the company actually operates rather than how it markets itself:

• Tell me about your company – age, size, and online reviews
• What services are included in your management package?
• How many buildings — and how many council meetings per year — do your managers carry?
• How do you handle communication with councils and owners? What is your standard for returning emails and phone calls? Can you commit in writing?
• How do you ensure financial accountability and transparency?
• What is the complete fee schedule, including extras?
• Do you receive any commission or referral fee from contractors or insurers?
• Who is the Managing Broker, and will we ever actually speak to them?
• What technology do you offer your clients?
• What’s your approach to strata conflict resolution and governance support?
• Can we speak to two current clients with buildings like ours?

Ask these of every company you shortlist and compare the answers side by side.  Learn more about what questions to ask a potential management company.

Yes. Out of respect for the time of the references, you should first narrow your shortlist to 1-3 management companies. Then, ask for two references from each.

We will connect you with current council members from buildings comparable to yours, and we would much rather you call them before you sign than after. We also encourage councils to read our Google reviews and to ask our Managing Broker directly about any client that has left us in the past two years. A company that won’t have that conversation is telling you something.

We manage portfolios by a combination of meeting load, number of stratas, and door count.  Meeting count is most important, because meetings are what actually consume a manager’s week. It is competitively sensitive but we are happy to discuss numbers in a phone call with prospective clients.

Two buildings with identical unit counts can be completely different jobs — one with monthly meetings, an active envelope project and commercial sections, against one with quarterly meetings and where Council does much of the work itself. 

Our Managing Broker reviews every portfolio regularly and rebalances if a building’s workload changes significantly.

When you’re comparing companies, ask for meetings per year, not just the number of buildings or units.

We receive no referral fees, no commissions, no rebates and no markups from trades, vendors or contractors. We receive no commission or fee share from insurance brokers on the placement of your strata policy. When we recommend a contractor, the only thing we have at stake is whether the work gets done properly and on time, because we will be the ones fielding the calls if it isn’t.

What we do receive, stated plainly: we retain the regulated fees for Form B and Form F documents (paid by the requesting owner, not the strata); we charge the administrative fees disclosed in our management contract, available to you in advance; and we bill major project management (if you want our support) as a percentage of project value, negotiated and agreed in advance of the project. That’s the complete list.

Licensees in BC are required to disclose remuneration received from any source other than their client. Ask every company you shortlist to put their answer in writing.

Your strata gets its own dedicated trust account — not a share of a pooled brokerage account with sub-ledgers. Interest earned on your funds is credited to your strata corporation, not retained by us. Unlike some industry competitors, we charge no percentage fee on your bank balance nor a portion of your interest earned.

Every invoice is approved online by council (and your strata manager, and your property accountant, and our Managing Broker) before it is paid, with a full audit trail recording who approved what and when. Our Controller reviews financial statements before release. Your monthly package includes bank statements with the reconciliation, so an eager council can verify balances independently rather than taking our word for them. Any council member can view all invoices, current and historical, online at any time.

A boutique firm is one small enough that the Managing Broker who runs the business knows your building, yet large enough to deliver exceptional service quality.

C&C is family-owned with long roots in North Vancouver and roughly 100 client strata corporations — big enough to run rigorous procedures, a licensed accounting team, attract top talent, and the same technology a national firm uses; small enough that our Managing Broker knows your council by name and can step in the same day.

The trade-off with a large national company usually runs the other way: stronger brand recognition, but more layers between your council and a decision, and a higher likelihood that your manager changes without you being consulted. We hold ourselves to a one-business-day standard for returning emails and calls, and every client can reach the Managing Broker and their property accountant directly. 

Learn more about why we proudly keep C&C a boutique firm.

We are based in North Vancouver and manage strata corporations across the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley.  This includes North Shore, Vancouver, West Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, New Westminster, Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey, Delta, Langley, Maple Ridge, Abbotsford, and Chilliwack. In other words, from Horseshoe Bay to Chilliwack.  

We also provide remote management for strata corporations elsewhere in British Columbia where a high-quality, locally-based manager isn’t practical or available.

Section 39 of the Strata Property Act gives your strata corporation a route out that does not depend on what your contract says. A strata can cancel its strata management contract on two months’ written notice, provided the cancellation is approved by a 3/4 vote at an annual or special general meeting. The management company has the same right to cancel on two months’ notice.

The important part is the wording of the section: cancellation under s.39 is available without liability or penalty, despite any provision of the contract to the contrary. Your agreement may well contain a longer notice clause or a fixed term — that clause cannot override the s.39 route.

This path does take some time. Remember, to be valid a SGM or AGM needs to have a Notice issued 20 days prior to the meeting. Then you can issue the 2 months’ notice. Your management contract may allow other avenues to cancellation that are faster and easier than an AGM/SGM: for example, a unanimous vote of Council may be sufficient. Check your management contract, and rely on Section 39 as your back-up plan.

Practical steps: read your agreement for the notice address and required delivery method, then plan the AGM or SGM timing around your fiscal year end so the handover of financial records falls somewhere sensible.

Usually, yes. The two months’ notice and 3/4 vote route under s.39 is available regardless of how much term is left on the agreement — a fixed term does not override it.

What that route does not do is wipe out money already owed. You will still owe fees through the two-month notice period and any amounts accrued before it. The management company is still your service provider during this time.

If your council is uncertain about what it has signed, book a call with our Managing Broker to discuss your options. We are also happy to review your existing agreement with you at no cost as part of preparing a proposal.

If this were a one-off project manager, you could send them a list of outstanding questions and the date they were sent. But in reality, property management is ongoing thus the outstanding questions will never end: you need someone you can trust to respond and catch the balls thrown at them without you babysitting them.

One option we recommend is to contact the brokerage’s Managing Broker directly. Managing Brokers are legally responsible for supervising licensed staff, and they may be able to improve the manager’s performance, or reduce their workload.

If it still isn’t resolved, it’s probably time to switch management companies. Do you suffer from any of the common warning signs of weak management? 

Lastly, you could file a complaint with the BC Financial Services Authority, which regulates strata management licensees in BC. Realistically, unanswered emails or action items dragging on too long are indicators of poor service, but not something a regulator will get involved in. Filing a complaint is best suited to egregious conduct that the regulator can help remedy: fraud or funds unduly withheld, for example.

They are your records, not the management company’s.

Section 37 of the Strata Property Act is clear. When a strata management contract ends, the company must give the strata corporation, within four weeks, any of the strata’s section 35 records in their possession or control. Section 37 also provides for a penalty, calculated under the regulations, for failing to do so.

What records are included?  Section 35, together with section 4.1 of the Strata Property Regulation, sets out what your strata must hold and for how long: minutes, owner and council lists, books of account, budgets and financial statements, bank records, bylaws and rules, contracts, correspondence, Form B Information Certificates, tribunal and arbitration decisions, legal opinions, depreciation reports, repair and maintenance records, electric vehicle charging documentation, and electrical planning reports.

The outgoing brokerage will keep its own copies to satisfy record-retention rules. That is normal and it is not a reason to withhold yours.  

One practical point: the legislation requires these documents to be provided within four weeks AFTER your contract ends.  That means your new management company would be quite hindered in providing service for those first weeks.  In practice, management companies almost always provide the most important documents in the weeks BEFORE their contract ends, to enable a smoother transition. 

It starts with a signed agency agreement, which allows us to begin acting on your behalf.

From there our transition team works in parallel with your outgoing company. We formally request the release of records. We open new trust bank accounts in your strata corporation’s name. We contact your existing trades, insurers and service providers so nothing lapses in the handover. We write to every owner with new pre-authorized payment instructions well ahead of the next fee due date. Then we schedule the first council meeting.

The owner payment step is the one we spend the most time on. It is the part of a transition that owners actually experience, and is critical to ensure the strata has no cashflow or arrears problems in those first few months.  Typically we have 80%+ of owners on pre-authorized debit by the end of Month 1 and 90% by end of Month 2.  

A standard transition runs alongside the two-month notice period provided to your outgoing management company, meaning we can start preparing BEFORE the handover.  One to two months after we take over, the transition should be complete.  Done well, owners (other than Council) notice a new payment instruction and a new phone number, and not much else.

For more details, read our Guide to Changing Strata Management Companies .

First off, your manager will come prepared having read the minutes from your latest AGM and two council meetings.  The Agenda they prepare will have carried forward all items from the most recent Council minutes that aren’t obviously complete already. 

The manager will go through our proprietary First Meeting Checklist, starting with an overview of how C&C operates: emergency procedure, the invoice approval workflow, response standards, who to contact for what, and so on.  Then they will want some logistical basics for your building such as site contacts, fob procedure, and move in/out preferences.  Perhaps most important is establishing the seasonal maintenance plan: filling in our template for your preferred vendor and timing of items like window washing, plumbing stack cleaning, sump pump servicing, and so on.  

With that out of the way, your manager will spend most of the remaining time listening.  We want to know how Council prefers to work, what is currently outstanding, what maintenance and capital projects are in flight, and the particular quirks of your building that never appear in any document. Every building has a few, and they are usually the things that cost time later.

You get a written action list out of that meeting, and that list is tracked and carried forward at every meeting afterward.

Tell us early. It happens, and is usually solvable.

Call the Managing Broker directly — you don’t need to raise it with your manager first. We aim to have a new manager in place within a month. We balance speed against making sure the replacement is genuinely the right fit for your building, because moving twice is harder on everyone than taking a few extra days to move once.

Emails and phone calls are returned within one business day. That is a promise, not an aspiration — it is the standard we hold our managers to, and the one you should hold us to.

Responsive, reliable, flexible and trusted is how we describe the relationship between our managers and the Councils they serve. The response standard is where that stops being a slogan and becomes something you can measure.

Beyond your manager, every client has direct access to our Managing Broker and to the property accountant assigned to their building. There is no call centre, no ticket queue, and no middle management between your Council and someone who can make a decision.  That’s what we mean when we say we are a boutique property management firm.

If responsiveness is the thing your Council is most frustrated about right now, ask about it during your search and we are happy to provide the commitment in writing.

We run Condo Manager for accounting, Sparcpay for accounts payable, and CondoWeb — Condo Manager’s owner portal — for owners and Council.

The part that matters is that CondoWeb syncs directly with the accounting system rather than sitting beside it. When an owner makes a payment or a charge is posted, it appears on their portal statement immediately. No overnight sync, no waiting until month-end, no owner emailing Council to ask whether their payment landed. If you have ever spent part of a council meeting on “my payment isn’t showing,” you will understand why we chose it. Owners can also handle amenity bookings and fob purchases there.

On the Council side, you approve invoices online with a full audit trail viewable, suppliers are paid by electronic funds transfer rather than by cheque, and every paid invoice stays viewable online for your records.  

We are happy to walk your Council through a live demonstration before you decide. Any portal is easier to judge in use than in a slide.

Statements are delivered by the 20th of the following month and reviewed by our Controller before release.

Each monthly package includes the financial statements, copies of every paid invoice, any cheques printed, a list of owners in arrears, bank statements with the reconciliation, and the full ledger of all transactions that month. Every invoice also stays viewable online with its approval audit trail, so any Council member can check who approved a payment and when without having to ask for it.

Occasionally clients will ask for more detail on a certain item, or the ledger in excel, and we are happy to accommodate.

Our strata managers range from newly licensed to twenty-year veterans. Frankly, we find ‘years of industry experience’ to be a poor indicator of manager quality.  We have had 6-month rookies who outperform 20-year veterans.  Equally important, our Managing Broker has decades of experience and works closely with each manager 1-on-1 to ensure the team is supported – that’s one advantage of being a mid-sized boutique.  

We hire for organization, attention to detail, communication and composure under pressure, and then we train. Experience matters, but a fifteen-year veteran who doesn’t return calls is worse for your building than a one-year manager who does.  We have found that a highly organized person, with strong interpersonal skills, and experience in a related field like construction or hotel management or logistics coordination can make an excellent new licensee within a few months.  Plus, new licensees don’t come with bad habits: we can train them on the right way to do things.    

On turnover: we are fortunate to have lost only one manager in 2026 and none in 2025.  Industry groups including the Condominium Home Owners Association have said for years that BC needs several hundred more licensed strata managers. That shortage is real and it affects every company in the province, ours included. A useful question is what happens when a manager does move on — whether the company has the bench depth and the documented procedures to make the change seamless to your Council. That is why we use standardized procedures rather than rely on what’s in someone’s head.

We act as your agent. We execute Council’s direction; we do not substitute our judgment for yours.

In practice that means preparing agendas and minutes, giving Council the information it needs to make a decision rather than just a recommendation without context, keeping contractors on-track, flagging where a proposed course of action creates a compliance or liability problem under the Strata Property Act, and taking the difficult owner conversations off volunteers.

Where a matter needs a lawyer, an engineer or an insurance adjuster, we say so early and help you bring the right one in. Knowing when to stop and call a specialist is part of the job, and it is usually cheaper than finding out later.

When your manager is away, another licensed strata manager is assigned to support your building, and your council and owners are told who to contact. That named backup is only part of it. Because every C&C client has a dedicated property accountant and direct access to our Managing Broker — both of whom already know your building, your history and your council — an absence doesn’t drop you into a queue with strangers. The people who can answer most questions were already familiar with you before the absence started.

That team structure is the practical argument for a boutique firm.

First, preventative maintenance.  In our first council meeting with you we develop an annual seasonal maintenance calendar, where we agree on your desired timing and vendors for items like window washing, plumbing stack cleaning, sump pump servicing, and so on.  Completed and upcoming services get reviewed each council meeting.

Second, reactive repairs.  They are logged, assigned to a qualified trade, and carried forward on the action list until they are closed out. A formal record of approval, and eventual completion, is made in the minutes.  Council shouldn’t have to remember what it asked for last meeting.

Finally, long term maintenance planning.  These are the items in your depreciation report and will be reviewed once per year with Council, in advance of the budget and AGM.  For example, if Council decides the boiler needs to be replaced, that needs to be included in the operating budget or voted on at the AGM as an expenditure from the Contingency Reserve Fund or Special Levy.

When repairs have a material impact on an owner’s daily life, communication is key.  Owners waiting for the elevator to come back into service, or for a ceiling leak to be repaired, need regular updates from the strata manager — even when the only news is that a part is on order. If your building is stuck in the opposite pattern, our guide to managing strata common property repairs covers what tends to go wrong and how to get a stalled repair moving again.

Three things decide it: whether the item is common property, limited common property, or part of a strata lot; what your registered strata plan says; and what your filed bylaws say.

Common property is the straightforward case. Section 72 of the Strata Property Act makes the strata corporation responsible for repairing and maintaining common property and common assets, and that responsibility cannot be moved onto owners.

Limited common property is where it gets complicated. Under the standard bylaws, routine upkeep of an LCP balcony or patio sits with the owner who uses it, while the structure, the exterior and the railings stay with the strata. Many stratas have amended those bylaws, though, so your filed bylaws are what actually govern — and a bylaw can only reach property that has actually been designated LCP on the strata plan. The slab and waterproofing membrane under a balcony usually remain ordinary common property, which no bylaw can shift.

There is more nuance here than most Councils expect, which is why we cross-reference the registered strata plan against your filed bylaws before advising on who is responsible for what. Our full guide to repair and maintenance obligations under the BC Strata Property Act works through limited common property in detail — what a bylaw can and cannot do, and how the costs get allocated.

We have an emergency and remediation expert available 24/7 for anything that cannot wait until the next business day — a flood, a failed elevator with someone inside, a front door that won’t lock, a heating failure in winter.  

This expert speaks with impacted owners to understand the situation, consults with our on-call strata manager when necessary, and dispatches an emergency trade where appropriate.  Council receives a real-time phone update if requested, and in any event a thorough written update the following morning.  Non-urgent calls are logged and handled by your strata manager the next business day.

One thing your strata manager will discuss with you in your first council meeting with C&C: in what circumstances does Council want to be immediately notified of after-hours emergencies?  Buildings genuinely differ on this, and 2:00 A.M. is a poor time to work it out.

We handle the administrative management of major projects.  At a high level, this can entail:

1. assist with the project design (e.g. choice of materials) 
2. tendering to engineers and/or contractors; 
3. assist in getting owner approval at the AGM/SGM;
4. assist with project financing;
5. administration of project budget; 
6. communication, site inspections and field meetings; and
7. documentation and record keeping.

For anything with engineering or building science content, we recommend the strata engage a qualified consultant, and we will help you find and evaluate one. We are not engineers, and on a structural project you need someone who is.  In fact, for many of these projects, municipalities will not consider a permit application that hasn’t been stamped by a licensed engineer.

Project support sits outside our base management fee. We bill it as a percentage of project value — between 1% and 5%, depending on the size of the project and how involved you want us to be. Our Managing Broker will discuss the scope with Council and give you a firm price before anything starts.  

For a more detailed discussion of our project services, book a call with the Managing Broker.

Sometimes, and this is one of the most misunderstood issues in BC stratas.

Under section 158 of the Strata Property Act, the deductible is a common expense paid by the strata corporation. Section 158(2) then preserves the strata’s ability to sue an owner to recover it where the owner is responsible for the loss or damage.  As explained by law firm Cleveland Doan, the courts have been clear that the strata does not need to prove the owner was negligent: if the cause of the damage arises from inside the unit, then the owner is liable for the deductible.

However, many stratas also enact bylaws on this same topic.  Where the bylaws establish a different standard from that of s.158(2), for example stating that “an owner must indemnify and save harmless the strata corporation from the expense of any maintenance, repair or replacement rendered necessary … by the owner’s act, omission, negligence or carelessness”, the different standard will be deemed to apply.  In this example, the CRT found the bylaw required the owner to be negligent rather than just responsible, which makes it more difficult for the strata to recover the deductible.  

Three things follow: 

1. Every owner should carry personal strata insurance covering a charge for the deductible.  Council does owners a real favour by saying so in writing before a claim rather than after one. That’s why C&C includes this advice in each AGM Notice.  
2. Your bylaws are worth reviewing so you know which standard applies in your building.  If they require a higher standard than “responsible”, you may want to have them amended.
3. A significant claim warrants legal advice on the specific facts before anything is charged to an owner. 

Almost certainly yes, and there is not much runway left.

British Columbia requires strata corporations with five or more strata lots to obtain an electrical planning report from a qualified professional. For stratas in Metro Vancouver, the Fraser Valley Regional District and the Capital Regional District, the deadline is December 31, 2026. For the rest of BC it is December 31, 2028.

The report assesses your building’s current electrical capacity and what it would take to support future demand, including electric vehicle charging. Qualified professionals — engineers, applied science technologists, and for smaller Part 9 buildings a journeyperson electrician — are booking well ahead as the deadline approaches, so build that into your timeline rather than assuming you can commission one in December.

Certain stratas can get away with a reduced “short form” report.  Under Section 5.11(3) of BC’s Strata Property Regulation, this is allowed only if each individual strata lot receives its electricity directly from the utility (like BC Hydro) completely independent of other lots and the strata corporation owns or manages zero shared common-property electrical distribution, transformers, or meter centers.  One thing to be careful about: separate BC Hydro bills do not prove independent supply. Plenty of stratas assume they qualify because each owner gets their own bill, when in fact there is a strata-owned transformer, vault, kiosk or meter centre somewhere on the property. That means a full report. The only way to know is for a qualified tradesperson to walk the property and look.

If this hasn’t been on a Council agenda yet, put it on the next one.

Yes, and the rules tightened substantially in 2024.

Strata corporations with five or more strata lots must obtain a depreciation report from a qualified person at least once every five years. The old ability to defer the report by an annual 3/4 vote was repealed effective July 1, 2024. It no longer exists.

Stratas in Metro Vancouver, the Fraser Valley Regional District and the Capital Regional District that had not obtained a report since December 31, 2020 were required to have one before July 1, 2026. That deadline has passed. If your strata is offside, commission the report now rather than waiting for it to become someone else’s problem: a missing or stale depreciation report shows on your Form B Information Certificate, and it surfaces at the worst moment — when an owner is selling and a buyer is arranging financing.

Stratas elsewhere in BC have until July 1, 2027.

You have to deal with the request properly, and from the end of 2026 that is a defined process rather than a matter of Council discretion.

Where an owner makes a qualifying request to install electric vehicle charging infrastructure, Council must decide within three months, must not unreasonably refuse, and may impose reasonable conditions. The strata may also grant short-term exclusive use of a common property parking stall, up to five years, in connection with charging. Certain EV charging decisions that once needed a 3/4 vote now require only a majority: for example, spending money from the Contingency Reserve Fund (Section 96(b)) or approving a significant change in the use or appearance of common property (Section 71(b)).  

Two dates to note. Once your strata has obtained its electrical planning report, or the December 31, 2026 deadline passes, the request process applies. And stratas with fewer than five strata lots — which need no electrical planning report at all — still have to follow the request process from December 31, 2026.

Our advice is to get the electrical planning report done first. It is far easier to answer an owner’s request, including potentially declining it, when you can point to the limitations of the building’s electrical capacity.

At minimum, 10% of the total amount budgeted for your operating fund contribution for the current fiscal year — and the amount must be set after “consideration of” your most recent depreciation report, not in isolation from it.

Since November 2023 there is no longer a maximum. Under the old rules, contributions above a certain point required a separate 3/4 vote. Today a strata can contribute as much as it likes to the contingency reserve fund by majority vote as part of the annual budget.

For most Lower Mainland buildings greater than five years old, the 10% floor sits well below what the depreciation report calls for. It is a legal minimum rather than a target, and the gap between the two is usually the most useful conversation a Council can have at budget time.

As of 2022, a strata corporation can no longer screen tenants, establish screening criteria, require approval of tenants, require the insertion of terms in tenancy agreements, or otherwise restrict the rental of a strata lot. An old rental restriction bylaw is not automatically struck from your filed bylaws — it is simply unenforceable — so it is worth repealing at your next AGM to save confusing owners and buyers. Still permitted: move-in and move-out fees (consistent between tenants and non-tenants), requiring a tenant’s name on request, bylaw enforcement against tenants, and the Form K.

Short-term rentals are a separate matter. A strata can pass a bylaw by 3/4 vote limiting or prohibiting short-term and vacation rentals, and the fine ceiling for those bylaws is $1,000 per contravention, chargeable daily. Two points worth knowing. Provincial short-term rental rules are a floor, not a substitute — a permissive strata bylaw does not exempt an owner from the provincial principal residence requirement or the registration regime that has applied since May 2025. And the Province does not share its short-term rental data with strata corporations, so enforcing your own bylaw remains your own job.

Regarding resident age, the only permitted restriction is a bylaw requiring one or more residents of a strata lot to have reached a specified age of at least 55. Bylaws setting a lower age or excluding children are unenforceable. Residents already living there when the bylaw passed are grandfathered, as are live-in caregivers. Children, adult children and younger spouses are exempt where the co-resident parent or spouse meets the age requirement or is themselves grandfathered.

Your bylaws set the fine, but the regulation sets the maximum: $200 for each contravention of a bylaw, $50 for each contravention of a rule, and $1,000 for each contravention of a short-term or vacation rental bylaw. A continuing contravention can be fined every seven days, and daily in the short-term rental case.

The process matters far more than the amount. Under section 135 of the Strata Property Act, before your strata can impose a fine, deny use of a recreational facility, or charge the cost of remedying a contravention, it must have received a complaint, given the owner or tenant the particulars of that complaint in writing, and given them a reasonable opportunity to respond — including a hearing if they ask for one. If the person is a tenant, notice must go to both the landlord and the owner. Written notice of Council’s decision must follow “as soon as feasible”.

Miss a step and the fine is unlikely to survive a Civil Resolution Tribunal challenge. This is the most common way a well-intentioned Council loses a case it should have won, and a documented process prevents nearly all of it.

A strata council is a group elected at the annual general meeting to run the day-to-day operations of the strata corporation on behalf of all owners — maintaining shared property, enforcing bylaws, overseeing finances, responding to emergencies, and instructing the strata manager.

Under the standard bylaws, council has at least three and no more than seven members, though your strata can change that number by passing a bylaw. If the strata plan has fewer than four strata lots, or the corporation has fewer than four owners, all owners are on council automatically.

On eligibility: by default, only owners, individuals representing corporate owners, and tenants who have been assigned the landlord’s right to stand may serve. A strata corporation can also pass a bylaw allowing other classes of people to serve — an owner’s spouse who isn’t on title, or an adult child, for example. This is a useful option for buildings struggling to fill council seats, and not a widely known one.  

Learn about the various Council roles and responsibilities.  

Most Councils start a search by drafting a request for proposal. It is a reasonable instinct, but an RFP tends to ask what a company offers rather than how it behaves when something goes wrong — and the second question is the one that predicts how the next three years will actually feel.

Book a 30-minute call with our Managing Broker. She will ask about your building, what is on your plate right now, and what has not been working.  She’ll be sure to discuss the things that determine how much attention your building will need. You will come away with a better understanding of what you do and don’t need from your management company, what C&C would cost, and whether or not you go further with us.

This page provides general information about strata management and British Columbia strata legislation. It is not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for advice on your strata corporation’s specific circumstances, bylaws or contracts. Legislation changes; this page was last reviewed on September 17, 2026. For advice specific to your strata, speak to a lawyer.